Jeff Hearn
has been involved in mens groups and anti-sexist activities and in researching and
writing on men since 1978. His publications include Sex at Work
(with Wendy Parkin), The Gender of Oppression, Men in the Public Eye and The
Violences of Men, and he has co-edited The Sexuality of Organization,Taking
Child Abuse Seriously, Men, Masculinities and Social Theory, Violence and
Gender Relations, Men as Managers, Managers as Men, Consuming Cultures, Transforming
Politics and Children, Child Abuse and Child Protection. He is Professorial
Research Fellow in the Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Manchester,
based in the School of Social Policy, and Donner Visiting Professor in Sociology with
particular reference to Gender Research, Ĺbo Akademi University, Finland.

Hearn did his MA - specialised
and Thesis in Organisational Sociology - at the Department of Management
Studies of the University of Leeds. He received a PhD on Social Theory,
Social Planning and Theories of Patriarchy at the University of Bradford
1986. His first published book was in 1983, a materialist analysis of
men's relations to children, followed by the book, “'Sex' at 'Work'”,
authored with Wendy Parkin, in 1987, on the power and paradox of
'organisation sexuality', and then “The Gender of Oppression”, a
neo-marxist, pro-feminist critique of contemporary patriarchy in the same
year.

Hearn has been Lecturer,
Senior-Lectorer, Research Fellow, Visiting Professor, Professor and the
like at universities in Bradford, Manchester, Sunderland, Ĺbo, Oslo and
elsewhere. He is currently teaching as a professor at the "Swedish
School of Economics and Business Administration" in Helsinki.

Jeff Hearn is a member of the
British Sociological Association, since 2005 member of the Conference and
Events Committee of BSA. He is co-editor

Recent years have seen the naming of men as
men. Men have become the subject of growing political, academic and policy debates; in
some respects this is not new; there have been previous periods of debate on men,
and then, in a different sense, much of politics, research and policy has always been
about men, often overwhelmingly so. What is new, however, is that these debates are now
more explicit, more gendered, more varied and sometimes more critical. At their base is
the assumption that men, like women, are not just naturally like this or
just bound to be that way, but rather are the result of historical, political,
economic, social and cultural forces.

One social change that is now in place is that
men and masculinities can at least be talked about as problematic. We can now ask such
questions as: What is a man? How do men maintain power? Is there a crisis of masculinity?
Or is there a crisis of men in a more fundamental way? Do we know what the future of men
looks like or should be? What policy and practice implications follow both in relation to
men and boys, and for men and boys? Importantly, there has also been a process of internal
critique and auto-critique (Hearn, 1994) within these discussions. For example, the idea
of crisis may well be overstating what is happening (Brittan, 1989), not least because for
many men life may continue very much the same as before.

So what form do these changes take? In what ways
do these changes mean significant and substantial change in relations between men, women
and children? And what are their policy implications for government, policy-making and
polity? Indeed just as there are new agendas for women, are there new agendas for men?

FEMINISM, NEW SEXUAL MOVEMENTS AND
MEN

Several influences have brought this renewed
focus on men and masculinities. First and foremost is impact on men of Second, and now
Third (or 1000th?), Wave Feminisms. Questions have been asked of all aspects of men and
mens actions by feminists and feminisms. Different feminist initiatives have focused
on different aspects of men, and have suggested different analyses of men and different
ways forward for men. Feminism has also demonstrated many theoretical and practical
lessons for men, though most men seem to to be able to ignore or forget most of them. One
is that the understanding of gender relations, women and men has to involve attention to
questions of power. Another is that to transform gender relations, and specifically
mens continued dominance of much social life, means not only changes in what women
do and what women are but also that men will have to change too. This may be hard for many
men to hear, and even harder to act on. These are vital issues for politics, policy
development and personal practice.

Other forces for change include the gay
movements, queer politics, other new sexual movements and the proliferation of
sexual discourses more generally. While it is difficult to generalise about the form and
direction of these critiques, they have often emphasised the desirability of (some) men to
each other, the more public recognition of men through same-sex desire, and the associated
or implied critique of heterosexual mens practices. However, the exact directions of
these new sexual movements remains diverse and difficult to predict.

Mens responses to feminism have also been
various. Since the early Seventies there have been anti-sexist men and
pro-feminist men, to be followed in the Eighties by wild men and
mythopoetic men, and the media creation of new men. The Nineties
have brought newish man, new lads, mens
rightists (some now very confusingly called The Mens Movement, as opposed to
the anti-sexist and the mythopoetic ones), and now post new men too. In the US
there are extremely worrying moves to gender-conscious, more or less anti-feminist,
political organising by men, such as the Coalition of Free Men (mens rights), the
Million Man March (Nation of Islam), and the Promise Keepers (Christian) (Minkowicz,
1995). In different ways, other, often composite, groups of men have been more willing and
able to identify themselves as men, for example, as older men or black
gay men.

THEORY AND ACADEMIA

Something similar has happened in academia. In
some senses there are as many ways of studying men and masculinities as there are
approaches to the social sciences. They range from examinations of masculine
psychology and psychodynamics (Craib, 1987) to broad societal, structural and
collective analyses of men (Hearn, 1987); they have interrogated the operation of
different masculinities  hegemonic, complicit, subordinated, marginalised, resistant
(Carrigan at el., 1985; Connell, 1995)  and the interrelations of unities and
differences between men (Hearn and Collinson, 1994); they have included detailed
ethnographic descriptions of particular men or mens activity as well as
investigations of the constructions of specific masculinites in specific discourses (Edley
and Wetherell, 1995). The International Association for Studies on Men has been
established as a research network for several years and is currently co-ordinated from
Norway.

The study of men and masculinities, whether
critical or otherwise, is no longer considered so esoteric. It is now established, if
rather tentatively, for teaching and research. While it has examined boys and
mens lives in schools, families, management, the military and elsewhere, many
aspects remain unexplored. As research has progressed, it has become more complex, less
concerned with just one level of analysis, and more concerned to link together
previously separated fields and approaches. These kinds of critique of men also imply
drastic rewritings of academic disciplines themselves, and their frequently
pre-scientific ignoring of the fact that their science has been dominantly
done by men, for men, and even primarily about men (Morgan, 1981).

The irony is that it is mens general social
power that may underwrite the choice of some boys and young men not to devote themselves
to schooling and learning. In the past this may not have been a special problem for young
men because of the structure of the labour market; that is no longer the case in many
localities. More generally, with such difficulties around education and employment, as
well as father absence/distance, crime, violence and so on, young men have been
increasingly defined in recent years as a problem category (see Hearn, 1998).

CULTURE, MEDIA, AND REPRESENTATION

Contemporary namings of men have been accompanied
by greater interest in men in the global worlds of consumption, advertising, journalism,
and popular culture. New global technology have created the possibility of more powerful
images of men and women that can be transferred around the world. Imaging men is now a
matter of both fiercely reaffirming boring old Rambos and their like, in film, computer
games, and comics, and presenting ever more ambiguous homo-het, man-woman pictures of
men in both mainstream and alternative media. An increasingly important
feature of media is the portrayal of men in sport. At the present rate of change, there
are likely to be all manner of surprising associations to be drawn in the future in image
and text around the sign of men or masculinity as signs (Saco, 1992). The critical
examination of images can also be used as a powerful way of informing discussion of men in
political, educational and other practical settings.

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE

If we compare women and men in the nineteenth
century and in the twentieth century, both major changes and major continuities are
obvious. While changes abound in law, work, citizenship, personal relations and so on,
there has been a widespread, stubborn persistence in mens dominance  in
politics, business, finance, war, diplomacy, the state, policing, crime, violence
generally, heterosexual institutions and practices, science, technology, culture, media,
and many other social arenas. What is perhaps most interesting is that while mens
general power as a (the) dominant social category remains virtually unchanged and may even
have become intensified in some respects, mens power is constantly being challenged,
fragmented, and even transformed. Men are more than ever being affirmed as
men; whilst at the same time the experience of being a man is subject to
questioning and acute fracturing (Hearn, 1992a). Mens situation, and particularly
mens power, is a complex mixture of change and no-change. Indeed the presence of
change for men should not be confused with any general assertion of a so-called
crisis in masculinity.

Specific changes, or potential changes, of
individual men and groups of men should be contextualised by social change more generally.
The current talk in the U.K may all be of boys underachievement but
social contexts and social changes that affect men are very much much wider. In the U.K.
there has been the End of Empire and mens sense of a certain place in the world
(Tolson, 1977); rapid transformations of capitalism and capitalist enterprises; and huge
losses of mens manufacturing jobs and growing service employment. Individual
fathers authority, no longer automatic, is in possible tension with the state.
Separations, divorces and remarriages have increased. There is now an growing recognition
that ways of being men are culturally and ethnically variable. All of these changes not
just affect but actively construct ordinary men in myriad ways. Furthermore, whatever
change in men and mens power occurs, or indeed is advocated, can affect all
areas of social life. These include: education, class, work, employment, race, sexuality,
violence, the family, childcare, the state, personal and private life, sport, care, health
and illness, age and ageing, birth and death, the body, and so on. To put this another
way, all the various changes addressed elsewhere in this book with regard to women can be
re-read as suggesting both social changes and possible policy changes in relation to men.

Just as mens relationships to feminism is
likely to remain problematic (Hearn, 1992b), so change in men is likely to be problematic
and uneven (Walby, 1986, 1990). It is highly unlikely that a radically new sexual
contract (Pateman, 1988) or gender contract (Hirdmann, 1988, 1990) will suddenly
arrive; rather we can expect a series of temporary settlements or
truces within a difficult long-term process, burdened by the weight and
oppressions of history.

There is also the need to increasingly consider
the changing global context for mens lives and power. While for most men life
remains local in the way it is lived, the forces that affect it are certainly becoming
more transnational in character; globalisation is in place and becoming ever more
developed. This is a very complex and often contradictory picture. At its simplest it
means that the fate of men and women is increasingly in the hands of economic, social and
cultural processes that transcend the nation. These processes often involve racialisation,
sexualisation, and the reproduction of other massive inequalities between
North and South and between various cores and
peripheries (see, for example, Human Development Report, 1995). The
idea of the self-contained unit, be it the nation or indeed the individual
man, is breaking down (Hearn, 1996).

In thinking about the future of men, there is,
however, a need for some gendered caution. Many of the grand narratives of the
future  globalisation, environmental destruction, population growth, food and water
scarcity, information explosion, reproductive engineering, technological advance generally
 typically remain presented as inevitable and strangely rather genderless, rather
than largely controlled by relatively small groups of men: the real men of the
world (Hearn, 1996), with their own brand of transnational business
masculinity (Connell, 1997). These global and international changes have major
implications for men and masculinities. The well-charted shift from private patriarchy to
public patriarchy (Walby, 1989, 1990; Hearn, 1992a) is itself being superseded by a
another shift, this time towards what might be conveniently called global patriarchy,
which is itself likely to be a diffuse and multi-centred social formation (Hearn, 1996).
Any would-be crisis in masculinity needs to be considered within that context, and the
loss of both immediate, and even national, control and power that men may be experiencing.

Having said that future change will probably be
relatively mundane for most men. Some of mens future is likely to follow existing
trends; other aspects are difficult to discern, unpredictable or unknown; much, short of
global catastrophe, will not change. Many men will probably still find ways of holding
onto various powers; of being violent, threatening, shouting, seeking to get their own
way, whilst leading rather circumscribed lives, working less total hours and getting paid
more than women, living less healthily, dying younger, and hanging out with
other men. Meanwhile, changes are inevitable. Much of the way men are will necessarily
change, in terms of specific conjunctions of age, body, class, culture, (dis)ability,
dress, ethnicity, kinship, language, nationality, race, religion, sexuality and other
social divisions that make someone a man, and some people men. Being a man is historically
and culturally contingent.

WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT

The central importance of work, still
usually meaning specifically paid work, for many men has been well established (for
example, Cockburn, 1984, 1991; Collinson and Hearn, 1996b). Work is a source of power and
resources, a central life interest, and a medium of identity, as well as being a source of
worry and concern. When men are unemployed or are inappropriately employed, extra problems
may follow for men, such as for mens health, and indeed for women too. Gender
segregation persists, and much of mens activity at work is homosocial: why do so
many (heterosexual) men seem to prefer men, and their cosy company?

The recent transformation of work, through major
structural change in employment and unemployment, has been extremely significant for many
men. The twenty years from 1973 to 1993, the number of men in employment shrank from 13.1
million to 10.7 million. The shift in the sectoral makeup was even more dramatic: with
changes from 39.7% to 27.9% in manufacturing; from 12.4% to 17.9% in retail, wholesale,
consumption, catering and leisure; and from 5.4% to 11.9% in finance, insurance, estate
agency and business services. Womens employment is also changing with more women
joining the labour market; there are already more young women than young men in the 16-19
age range in employment. Particularly significant increases in womens employment,
especially part-time employment, have occurred in the financial sector and in community,
social and personal services (see Chapter XX; Dickens, 1995). Work changes for women also
necessarily impact on men.

These structural changes mean that many men have
experienced personal change in their working lives. No longer is lifelong security of
employment guaranteed, not even for the relatively successful and well qualified;
so-called traditional working class-based masculinities, most obviously around
heavy manufacturing and mining, can no longer be easily sustained unchallenged (Dicks et
al., 1998, Waddington et al., 1998); meanwhile corporate reorganisation is commonplace;
post-Fordist flexibility demands flexibility of men. In the first 5 years of the Nineties
44 percent of the male workforce experienced unemployment at some point. And of course for
many men, especially young, less qualified men, the prospect of unemployment remains. This
is a particularly urgent problem in certain inner city localities and large city-edge
council estates, and for some young black men, especially in London and other
urban centres. Policies for work generation remain a particularly high priority for young,
working class and black men.

Mens work and (un)employment also interact
closely with domestic and family life. Despite and perhaps because of the transformations
in mens work, men who are in employment tend to work longer hours than almost all
other men in the EU. The phenomenon of presentism is a serious problem in some sectors,
and difficult to resist for men whose jobs remain insecure. There are urgent needs for
government and employers to facilitate ways and means for men to reconcile (un)employed
life and family life in a much more positive way  in employment and income support
policies, and in managerial practices. These include attention to more job-sharing,
voluntary reduced work time (whilst being full-time), flexible working hours,
term time working, working from home, and other approaches promoted by New Ways to Work
(1993, 1995) and similar initiatives. It also means men adjusting socially and
psychologically to not necessarily being the breadwinner. Indeed greater
equality in employment depends on greater equality in unpaid work in the home. There is
thus a need to consider how men can contribute to both overall levels of household income
and a more equal gendered division of labour both in and outside the home.

While employment changes have transformed many
mens relation to work, men remain in control of most powerful organisations, whether
state, capitalist or third sector. This is especially so in terms of mens continued
domination of top management (Collinson and Hearn, 1996a) in capital and the state. Men in
management are important political actors; while management certainly can be a
facilitating process, managers may reproduce uncaring, sexually oppressive and even
violent and abusive actions, without much comeback. They also have the task of overseeing
and underwriting the behaviour of other men in their charge. Equal opportunities policies
can themselves be a way of both implementing greater equality and containing more radical
demands for change. It is in organisations that the public doing of gender is
predominantly done and re-done. Furthermore, organisations and their control are
fundamentally important, and becoming even more so, with the development of globalisation
through multi-nationals, transnational governmental institutions, worldwide media and
information networks, and so on. These are also vital in the changing mens
relationship to the personal and the private. Men in management have a special
responsibility to facilitate mens caring for others, as do men in government.

FAMILIES, FATHERS AND CARE

Although patriarchy has certainly changed in form
over the last century or more, especially through the growth of the state, mens
power still resides at least in part in the family and the institution of fatherhood
(Hearn, 1987). Historically, fatherhood is both a means of possession of and care for
young people, and an arrangement between men. It has also been and still is a way for some
men of living with, being with, being violent to, sexually abusing, caring for and loving particular
young people (those that called your own), and a way of avoiding connection,
care and contact with other young people more generally. Even nice fathers can switch to
become nasty ones. Fatherhood has often involved getting something for nothing, an
assumption of rights and authority over others, principally women and children, rather
than responsibilties for them. The problems of both father absence and father distance are
now recognised more than ever (Williams, 1998). For some men, becoming fathers can and
obviously does involve major changes in responsibilities and more work.

State intervention in the rights and
responsibilities of fatherhood - most obviously through the Child Support Agency and the
Children Act of 1989, but also more subtly through state control of reproductive
technology, such as IVF  has increased. The last few years have also and
paradoxically seen signs of a growth in the rights of fathers, as well as in the
assumption that such power and authority are natural and normal.
Even a glance through history and across cultures will show this to be extremely
problematic. These issues become more complicated as mens relationships to families
develops over time - how to be positive and responsible to others in families, without
asserting the power and authority of the father. This is especially important in long-term
relationships, whether with or without marriage, and with the increasing number of men
involved in separation, divorce and reconstituted families of various kinds. The number of
women petitioning for divorce has doubled in the last twenty years. There is a clear need
for a post-marriage ethics for men. In addition there are long term changes in
the number of men living alone.

So a challenge for men is how is to respond to
these difficult questions - to love, care for and be friends with young people without
drawing on the power of the father. This may even involve working toward the abolition of
that power of fatherhood whilst recognising the reality of responsibilities in mens
lives (Hearn, 1983, 1984, 1987). Social and educational policies need to be directed
towards assisting those who are carers, and not the so-called rights of
natural fathers, just by virtue of biological fatherhood. Such policies should
support carers and encourage boys and men to participate much more fully in the activity
of caring. One primary way of doing this is for a massive increase in state funding of
support for child carers. Provision of publicly-funded child care in the U.K. remains
derisory; at present it is available for only two percent of children under three (Daycare
Trust, cited in Toynbee, 1998), one of the lowest rates in Europe. As such, this lack of
funding is a clear governmental underwriting of the dominant system of unpaid care,
largely by women.

Questions of care and caring are central in how
boys and men change their practice in relation to others, both physically and emotionally.
So often mens avoidance of caring has been the defining feature of being
men. This is very much a structural question in terms of women doing more
caring work, both in private and in public. There have been some increases in mens
active participation in childcare and domestic work, but the baseline from which change is
beginning is low. In addition, specific changes of this kind need to be placed against
other changes  for example, womens employment, domestic technology, and
womens leisure. Mens activity may be focused on particular tasks, such as
weekly shopping, or at particular periods, such as around childbirth. However, fathers
with young children are particularly likely to work long hours in employment (Fagan,
1996). This could be for a variety of reasons, including compensation for loss of
womens earnings, the contribution of extra working to help establish mens
careers, avoidance of childcare, and the reproduction of gender divisions in the family.

There is some evidence of a tendency for men with
more education to do more housework, but again this broad trend should be treated with
caution, not least because of the impact of greedy occupations (see Moyes,
1995; Lunneberg, 1997). There are also gradually growing numbers of lone fathers 
from about 70,000 in 1970 to about 110,000 by 1990. On the other hand, the increase in
mens unemployment in the 1980s did not generally lead to increases in mens
work in the home, and may well have involved disproportionately negative effects for wives
and other women partners (for example, McKee and Bell, 1985, 1986).

The 1996 British Social Attitudes Survey found
that in 79% of households women did the washing and ironing alone, and in 48% women looked
after sick family members alone while men never did so alone (Lunneberg, 1997). The Mintel
2000 Survey found only two percent of men did all the household tasks or shared them
equally (Mintel, 1994). Men with wives who are in employment may be changing, but only
slowly. Men with wives in full-time employment may in some cases take on more household
work, but this may more likely involve a shift in the tasks that they are doing rather
than devoting more time in total to housework (Anderson et al., 1994).

Boys and men learn not to care for others,
and changing this is an important part of the project of socialisation, for example, in
the education of boys at home and in school. This should be a major policy development -
in nurseries and schools, by government and education authorities, and in higher education
- not as an afterthought or something left to the whims and wishes of individual teachers.
Like fatherhood and the family, caring is both a very personal issue and one built into
wider societal structures and political institutions. It is not solved by
increasing day care provision, vital as that is - the problem goes to the very structuring
of how men behave, feel, are. It is an area of life that can bring fundamental change in
mens experience of themselves; it can also bring about both direct antagonisms
(deciding who will stay in or look after someone who is ill) and direct improvements in
the quality of relationships. The question of caring also raises the challenge of how men
become and do more caring, without just taking over.

A special challenge is how to encourage boys and
young men to become more used to the bodily care of others in a way that does not lead to
further dominance. This has to be attempted, yet with great care and caution - perhaps
initially by the encouragement of care in their own families and in schools by the
teaching of safety and first aid, and the care of pets and animals, and then moving on,
under supervision, to the care of babies, young children, older people, those with
disabilities elsewhere. Nurturing can be redefined as normal for boys, young men and men.
More specifically, it involves teaching to boys gentleness and non-erotic forms of touch.
However, throughout we need to be alive to the problems with this scenario, for example,
in terms of potential abuse. It is not enough to just leave the dominant forces to define
boys and men and then pick up the urgent need for positive initiatives that assist the
redefinition of boys and men towards care and nurture as central defining features
(Salisbury and Jackson, 1994). Educational policy and practice should be directed towards
teaching boys how to care; boys caring should be expected, valued and indeed
rewarded.

EDUCATION

In the last few years education has had a high
profile in public debates about boys and young men. In considering this it is important,
however, to remember that mens general domination of education persists. This is
clear in the occupation of headships and other senior staff positions in upper schools, in
national and local educational policy-making, and in the universities and academia.
Meanwhile many boys, particularly poor working class boys, are not achieving well at
school. In 1994 43 percent of girls gained five or more GCSEs at grades A to C, compared
with 34 percent of boys (Pratt, 1996). More specifically, a recent report for the Equal
Opportunities Commission found that girls outperformed boys at GCSE in English, Modern
Languages, Technology, History, and Art; and at A level in Geography, Social Studies, art,
Chemistry and Biology (Arnot et al., 1996).

Boys performance in schools is a complex
issue. This policy issue of boys (under)achievement can be understood in many
different ways. The issue can be framed in terms of human capital, class inequality, equal
opportunities or social justice. Links can be drawn between the low educational attainment
of some boys and the low employment rates of some young men. There is also for some boys
an antagonism between educational attainment, even attentiveness, and the performance and
achievement of particular and valued masculinities. But most importantly, it should not be
seen as a problem of girls doing too well; rather as boys not doing well enough. As
Madeleine Arnot, one of the leading researchers in this field, has put it: We have a
success story here. This is an excellent sign of the work schools have done to improve
girls performance. So that they are now catching up (quoted in Judd, 1996,
p.1).

The way forward on this question is certainly not
by way of any kind of backlash against girls achievements. Nor, in the long run, are
boys likely to be encouraged to take education more seriously by trying to involve them
through resort to further officially sanctioned use of competitive and aggressive methods
and materials. Instead formal attention needs to be given to the very basis of how boys
are meant to be. Boys are considerably more likely to damage themselves through
risk-taking behaviour than are girls (see p. XXX). Just as the problem of normal
manhood remains a problem for many men, so does that of normal boyhood.
Perhaps it is in fact more accurate to speak of a crisis in boyhood than it is to assert a
crisis in masculinity. Schools and other educational arenas are major sites for the
possible reinforcement or challenge to dominant and subordinated ways of being boys. There
thus a need for thoroughgoing strategies on all aspects of gender relations in those
institutions that assist the fostering of less oppressive ways of being boys and thus men
(Connell, 1996). There is great scope here for more focused boyswork,
youthwork and educational work with boys and young men, not only on educational questions,
but also on all the issues raised here. Such work needs to be undertaken within a
pro-feminist framework if it is not to merely reproduce some of the inequalities of past
single-sex education.

The irony is that it is mens general social
power that may underwrite the choice of some boys and young men not to devote themselves
to schooling and learning. In the past this may not have been a special problem for young
men because of the structure of the labour market; that is no longer the case in many
localities. More generally, with such difficulties around education and employment, as
well as father absence/distance, crime, violence and so on, young men have been
increasingly defined in recent years as a problem category (see Hearn, 1998a).

SEXUALITY

Mens sexuality has often been neglected as
a focus for change, except as a reaction to the initiatives of the Right. Dominant forms
of normal male sexuality  characterised as power, aggression,
penis-orientation, separation of sex from loving emotion, objectification, fetishism, and
supposed uncontrollability (Coveney at al., 1984)  have been described
and critiqued as highly problematic. For some, perhaps most, men, the connection of
sexuality and violence is fundamental, as violence is eroticised, most obviously in
pornography. This is not the way mens sexuality is or has to be all the time.

Sexuality may feel to be that which is the most
personal, the most ones own; yet it is also structural. For example,
heterosexuality is as much a social institution as marriage. Heterosexist culture and
homophobia continue to abound. Mens domination of sex and sexuality, and the
reduction of sex to intercourse, to ejaculation, to orgasm are still represented as
"just normal, arent they?" Heterosexual men may often be misogynist: the
object of love can be the object of hate. Gay men are not necessarily pro-feminist.
Homophobic men may inhabit homosocial pubs, clubs, organisations and workgroups - so what
exactly are these sexual loyalties between men?

More broadly, it is important to emphasise that
the pressures on the construction of mens sexuality seem to be diverging more and
more - the forces of reaction, of the glorification of sexual violence, of Internet sex,
of anti-gay politics (most obviously around HIV/AIDS) are ever stronger - while at the
same time there is a gathering public confidence around sexual progressivism, queer
politics, lesbian and gay rights, outing (Reynolds, 1999), and even a small
anti-sexist politics of heterosexuality. There is of course a specific and urgent need for
law reform, to abolish discriminatory legislation against young gays (around age of
consent), same-sex sexuality more generally (Local Government Act 1988, Section 28), and
older gays (around pensions, tenure and property rights, and so on).

Furthermore, anti-gay politics can damage both
gay men and heterosexual men. They can be physically dangerous and personally undermining
for gay men. Heterosexual men may come out or change to being gay; less obviously to some,
there is the gay part or gayness of heterosexual men. So heterosexual men need to support
gay men, partly for political principles of equality and justice, and partly for
self-interest (Hearn, 1992a).

In all of this, there is a need to develop an
important educational debate and practice around sex and sexuality  not least around
what is understood by sex and sexuality, and the practice of safe(r) sex. This has to
affirm different sexualities, work towards non-oppressive sexualities, support young gays,
and engage with the real dilemmas that young people face in their everyday lives. For
young men, this means promoting, in schools and elsewhere, intimate and sexual
relationships that are non-threatening, non-oppressive and responsible (Salisbury and
Jackson, 1996). Mens and boys sexuality is as much a matter for public debate,
policy development and social change as is violence. A major challenge is how men to
acknowledge their sexuality, and even be proud of it, without being oppressively sexual or
sexually oppressive. What chance is there for real change in men without that?

VIOLENCE AND CRIME

As will already be apparent from the previous
discussion, it is not possible to make a strict separation between mens sexuality
and mens violence, in this society at least. A lot of what men do needs to be
re-labelled as violence. This would include, child abuse, child sexual abuse, domestic
violence, rioting, crime, policing, soldiering, wars, football hooliganism, public
disorder. It might seem hard to talk about crime and violence without talking about men,
and yet this has been done quite successfully for a long time (see Cordery and Whitehead,
1992; Newburn and Stanko, 1994; Collier, 1995). Crime and violence are very largely a
problem for men, and they are also resources to show certain masculinities to others
(Messerschmidt, 1993). Furthermore, debates on crime, violence and indeed punishment and
imprisonment need to be conducted carefully in relation to not just gender but also age,
class, locality and racialisation (Gilroy, 1987; Jefferson, 1991).

Much of mens violence needs to be
understood as conscious, deliberate actions and as forms or examples of particular
masculinities (Hearn, 1998b). Mens violence to women, children, young people, and
each other needs, indeed demands, not just patching up the problem, but the changing of
men and normal masculinity (Hearn, 1990). Examples here might include what is
seen as the normal behaviour of certain men and boys, as fathers, teachers,
workmates, school mates and so on, in reproducing ordinary, everyday violence to others
and each other.

Mens violence is thus about both violence
to women, children and young people, and often less obviously, violence to the self - in
self-brutalisation and the denial and victory over the non-violent parts of
ourselves (Kaufman, 1987). Violence may bring power and dominance, but it may also bring
unhappiness and self-destruction. Men who are violent are generally not happy men (Maiuro
et al., 1988), even if they enjoy the violence..

This suggests the need for men to both recognise
mens own violence and potential violence, whilst opposing and stopping mens
violence - in war, armies, initiation ceremonies, bullying, unsafe working conditions,
personal relationships, and being on the street. Campaigns against such initiations, lack
of safety in workplaces, bullying and violence at work are all good ways of bringing
together men concerned to work against sexism, trade unions, and anti-racist and other
interested groups. These are thereby necessary concerns of equal opportunities policies
and responsibilities of managements.

In reducing and opposing mens violence, a
necessary first thing to do is to make a national commitment against violence. This
should be an absolutely central plank of the policies of government and the political
parties. The recent Gulbenkian Foundation Commission Report (1995), Children and
Violence made as its first priority recommendation: Individuals, communities and
government all levels should adopt a Commitment to non-violence, of similar
standing, to existing commitments to equal opportunities. The Report
continued: The aims of the commitment are to work towards a society in which
individuals, communities and government share non-violent values and resolve conflict by
non-violent means. Building such a society involves in particular reducing and preventing
violence involving children, by developing:

· understanding of the factors which interact to
increase the potential for violence involving children, and those which prevent children
from becoming violent

· action to prevent violence involving children
in all services and work with families and children

· consistent disavowal of all forms of
inter-personal violence - in particular by opinion-leaders (p. 18)

Thus governmental and other policies and
strategies should take a clear position that opposes violence, should tell boys and men
not to be violent, should advocate policies that encourage men to behave in ways that
facilitate womens equality, and make it clear that the realisation of such changes
depends partly on men in politics and policy-making, and their own understanding of their
gendered actions. So the vision here is a world without mens violence, without men
as we know them.

There is increasing interest in policies that try
to stop mens violence directly, such as programmes for men who have been violent to
known women (Gondolf, 1985; Pence and Paymar, 1986; Adams, 1988; Caesar and Hamberger,
1989; Edelson and Tolman, 1992; Lees and Lloyd, 1994). Such programmes remain
controversial in terms of underlying philosophy, methods of change and resource basis. In
recent years there has been a developing critique of approaches that are narrowly
psychological or focused on anger management, and instead a movement towards those based
on power and control model that is pro-feminist in orientation. The latter
kinds of programmes can be a significant and effective initiative, especially when linked
to wider educational and political change (Dobash et al., 1996). A crucial and current
issue is whether such programmes should become court-mandated and a responsibility of the
probation service rather than accessed on a voluntary basis. Any such development needs to
carefully screen out men who have no interest whatsoever in change and who may even use
programme to learn new forms of violence and control. Even more important, any innovations
for men have to be supplements to broaden major public policy changes - including,
consistent police prosecution policy and practice; inter-agency work for women
experiencing violence; improved housing provision for women; and full state support for
Womens Aid and other projects for women.

Finally, discussion of violence would be
incomplete without a mention of sport, itself often a major public arena of legitimated
violence, often of a severe kind. Sport also remains a major point of influence in
creating and changing boys and young men, and thus men. It can also be a source of
considerable anxiety since it is still often a pre-eminent activity for establishing
masculine identity. And retirement from sport can bring further difficulties
for men and others around them. Sporting events and loyalties could be effective places to
oppose mens violence, perhaps through a modified version of the Zero Tolerance
campaigns, just as they have been to counter racism in professional football in the
Kick Racism Out Of Football campaign.

HEALTH

If there is one policy arena that
has attracted attention from a wide range of constituencies and interests in recent years,
it is that of mens health. The concern for mens health has been mobilized as
if it is a common, cross-generational concern - perhaps a kind of mythical consensus.
Mens health can be represented as an issue for all men, and indeed women
too. For different reasons, the question of mens health has attracted involvement
from government, employers, trade unions, pharmaceutical and medical industries, medical
professionals, and health educators and activists. Significantly, in the last few years
there have been a number of conferences bringing together such diverse groups; in some
cases these have been high status occasions with sponsorship from the financial and
industrial sectors. The concern with mens health can be appealing both to men
promoting a backlash against feminism and who are insistent on the disadvantages of being
male and to men who wish to develop a pro-feminist politics and change their relationship
to women and children (see, for example, HFA 2000 News, 1994; Bruckenwell et al,
1995; Bradford, 1995; also see Sabo and Gordon, 1995). In particular, discussions of
mens health should not be read as necessarily antagonistic to those on womens
health.

The central issue that has
attracted concern is the fact that at every stage of the life of a boy or man, he is more
likely to die than a girl or woman of equivalent age. At different stages different
hazards affect boys and men, and different risks are taken by them - accidents as a child,
suicide and motor vehicles as young men, and the effects of diet, smoking, drinking and
sexual habits later in life. For example, in the 15-34 year old male age group, 21 per
cent of deaths are from road vehicle accidents, 20 per cent are from other causes of
injury and poisoning, and 17 per cent are from suicides (OPCS, 1992, quoted in Calman,
1993, p212). Life expectancy for those born between 1985 and 1990 is 78.1 years for women,
and 72.4 years for men. Throughout most of this century, there has been at least a five
year difference between men and women. The EU difference is slightly higher still at 7.1
years (OHE Compendium of Health Statistics, 1992). One part of this discrepancy comes from
mens higher level of suicide, which stands at more than three times the rate of
womens suicide. Furthermore, over the last ten years there has been an 80 per cent
increase in suicide by males. Particular concern has been the increase in the suicide of
young men (Charlton et al, 1993; Befrienders International, 1995).

These issues of the health,
mortality and suicide of young men are not peculiar to the UK, and indeed similar trends
are attracting attention in France and elsewhere in Europe (Jougla, 1994). Furthermore,
the physical health debate has recently been extended into the realm of mental health. For
example, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1996) report publicised the relatively
hidden question of mens depression, and the lack of recognition of this problem both
amongst men, as evidenced in their low levels of help-seeking, and more generally in
medical and policy development. The Samaritans have reported an 80 per cent increase in
male suicide in the last ten years (Cohen, 1996).

The problem of mens health
has now been recognised in the statements of the Chief Medical Officer, Kenneth Calman
(1993, p6, 106):

Although some diseases,
such as prostatism, are obviously unique to men, the main differences in mortality and
morbidity relate to variations in exposure to risk factors. Thus, there should be great
potential for improvement in health in many areas, for example CHD and accidents. Further
work is particularly needed on targeting health messages to men. Women seem to be more
aware of their own bodies and pay more attention to health messages. Health messages for
men may be more effectively transmitted through mothers or sisters, wives or girlfriends,
but men must now be brought up to be more aware of their own bodies and not be reluctant
to seek help ... . It is to be hoped that Regions and Districts will investigate ways to
promote the health of men over the next few years.

Despite an apparent
difference, if not resistance, to health promotion messages among men it must be brought
home to them that many of the risk factors to their health - such as smoking, physical
inactivity, poor diet, excess alcohol consumption, unsafe sexual practices and risky
behaviour likely to lead to accidents - are preventable. Thus the scope for men to improve
their health, and to prolong active, healthy life, is considerable.

Despite these kinds of
observations, the policy debate on mens health has not dwelt extensively on the
social divisions between men, by class, race, locality, sexuality and so on. These
divisions are important, for the state of mens health is subject to a range of
social influences - some associated with power and control, and some with attempts to
extend (or appear to extend) power and control by those with relatively less power and
control but who are still members of a powerful social category.

Many men in relatively less
powerful social positions may survive, attempt to survive or fail to survive by passive
coping, for example, in depression, social withdrawal, watching television, drinking or
whatever. Yet active assertions of power, especially over women and children, and passive
resistance can go hand in hand. Real uncertainties remain on how some men may actively
resist capitalist, managerial and other mens oppressions without perpetuating
practices that oppress women: how to be tough on men who are oppressive to women and men,
without at the same time oppressing women. Similarly, improving mens health involves
developing policies and practices that support men without further oppressing women. For
example, boys and men frequent learning that it is socially desirable to ignore pain and
avoid doctors (Briscoe, 1989) needs to be demystified and unlearnt.

CONCLUSION: POLITICS AND PRACTICE

Mens societal dominance continues; yet at
the same time certain groups of men are facing considerable change from previous social
patterns and arrangements - at home, work and elsewhere. Despite the extent of the changes
and challenges outlined, it is premature to talk of a widespread crisis of
masculinity. Individual men and certain groups of men may be facing, even
confronting, change, like it or not, and they may indeed be changing, but this has to be
put in the context of the stubborn stability of mens structural power. For some
relatively less powerful groups of men, the combination of lack of educational success,
reduction in traditional jobs, avoidance of womens work, and their own
more damaging actions (to both themselves and others) may indeed constitute a material
crisis for them and others around them. But this generally may not (yet) match closely
with an ideological crisis in how men are assumed to be. The contradictions between the
material and the ideological state of men and masculinities may be growing but are not yet
at crisis point for most men, and certainly not for men in general.

All of the issues that I have discussed here are
important for what it means to be a man in this society. They have, however,
all often remain neglected in what is generally defined as politics.
Transforming what is understood by politics is part of transforming men. All of these
issues are also both profoundly structural and intensely personal. Each can also prompt
great depths of negativity - feelings of hopelessness, terribleness, desperation - as well
as being arenas of possible positive change and hope. Each is a way of unifying men as
a class, with different interests to women and dividing men from each other -
old from young, heterosexual from gay, healthy from unwell, and so on. Each is a way of
oppressing women, children and young people, and a way of relating to other men. And each
represents an avenue for men opposing oppression, supporting feminist initiatives, and
changing men.

Policies and practices are needed that address
these issues in all policy arenas; they need to name men and the persistence of mens
powers, without stereotyping men. In doing this, there are dangers that an increased focus
on men may divert attention from women and womens agendas by arguing that men should
have even more resources for solving these problems. So vigilance is necessary in this
respect.

However, it is useful to bear in mind that a
critical focus on men is not in mens general interest, just as it is not in the
interests of other dominant groups to focus critically on them. This will involve debate,
clear policy statements, publications and other materials, education and teaching,
professional interventions, pro-feminist menswork and boyswork,
and research. It is time that government had a strategy on changing men away from power
and oppression as part of its strategy for women and gender justice. In particular
a distinction needs to be drawn between support between and for men that encourages
domination and support between and for men that diminishes domination. The latter kind on
initiatives are necessary not only in the state but throughout all areas of social life
society, in business, community, media, religion, sport and other public and indeed
private forums.

Finally, one further likely and paradoxical
implication of the naming of men is that the deconstruction of men may be opened up more
fully. Changing future agendas for women involves changing men; changing men involves
deconstructing men and reducing mens power; and, in the longer term still, this may
even involve the abolition of men as such a ubiquitously important social
category. Is it time at last for men to change, and both to develop and be subject to new
agendas?

References

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Perspectives on Wife Abuse, Newbury Park, Ca. and London: Sage.

Anderson, Michael, Bechhofer, Frank and Gershuny,
Jonathan (1995) The Social and Political Economy of the Household, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Connell, R.W. (1996) Teaching the boys: new
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Record (USA), Vol. 98(2), pp. 206-235.

Connell R.W. (1997) Arms and the man: using
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Hearn, Jeff (1992b) The personal, the
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McKee, Linda and Bell, Colin (1985) Marital
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